Course Description
Investigation of same-sex desire, heterosexuality, homosexuality, and the regulation of sexual identities across different racial/ethnic and class/regional communities. Focusing on Native American, African American, Latino, Asian American, and international studies, with texts from law, anthropology, history, film, fiction, and theory.
Athena Title
Diversity in LGBTQ Politics
Prerequisite
Third-year student standing or permission of department
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
The objectives of this course include: to give students a scholarly framework within which to assess the development of modern gay, lesbian and bisexual identities; to provide students with historical and cross-cultural perspectives to allow them to understand the changing and constructed nature of human sexuality; to provide an intellectual understanding of the debates surrounding the regulation of sexuality in past and contemporary societies. At the end of this course all students have a more comprehensive knowledge of the diverse and changing meanings attached to sexual identities and should be able to contextualize modern concern with heterosexual and homosexual distinctions and divisions. Students will be evaluated on in-class presentations, exams, and written essays, derived from intensive readings and seminar-style class discussion, and based on the themes around which the course is organized.
Topical Outline
1.Sexual Politics: How do we make sense of (hetero)sexuality? What is so troubling about homosexuality? 2. Identity and Experience: What's homosexuality? What's heterosexuality? Does history matter? Do categories matter? 3. What's "Natural"? What's "Queer"? Cross Cultural and Historical Perspectives on Sexual Identities and Practices: The examples of past and present Native American and Asian American Communities 4. Queer Narratives: Telling our stories differently? Issues of rejection, community, identification and family 5. Finding "Family": Loss and (Be)Longing: Making new lives and re/defining social space 6. Regulating Bodies: Homophobia, Law and Politics: What are we up against? Who are "we"?--citizens or outlaws? What strategies are necessary and appropriate for "resistance"? 7. Representation of Queer Otherness: Structures of domination and repression: opportunities for contestation? 8. Articulating Desire/s: How significant are sexual pleasures (and dangers)? How do we know our desires? What has feminism got to do with it? 9. Politics, Activism, Strategies: Out for ourselves? Does theory matter? What is gay and lesbian studies? What are "we"/"they" learning?
Syllabus